


Lif und Andlat

by Rikkamaru



Series: Random Discontinued Stories [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 22:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17692199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikkamaru/pseuds/Rikkamaru
Summary: Tim has always heard voices in his head.





	Lif und Andlat

Tim has always heard voices in his head. 

They say words he’s never heard before, words with clear meanings behind them that are lost to him. It’s usually one voice in particular; occasionally more appear but they are little more than echoes and mad if "intelligible" ravings that shook his core whenever they appeared. A voice that made Tim want to hide, want to cry, want to remove the voice permanently from his head – it was smooth, and cold, much like his mother, but was filled with a madness Janet Drake would never hold and would never allow to take hold within her.

He despised that voice, and when he was seven he finally managed to block it out of his mind and remove the memory-that-wasn't that had been plaguing his thoughts. By then he had written every word it had ever told him down to the best of his ability.

When he was nine, Tim figured out two things: one, that Robin was Dick Grayson and Batman was Bruce Wayne, and two, the words he'd written down most closely resembled Old Norse, though it was different enough to be construed as a separate language.

And so grew Tim's two new hobbies, linguistics and photography.

When Tim was ten he watched as Robin disappeared and reappeared, but it was a different boy. A quick google search confirmed that yes, Bruce Wayne had adopted a new child, one Jason Todd. Tim hummed to himself and thought of leaving him a "Welcome to Vigilantism" care package on the roofs of Gotham before dismissing such thoughts. It likely wouldn't be appreciated by the paranoid family.

At this point Tim allowed his interest in languages to shift toward other Germanic languages to expand his understanding of Old Norse. He had read the Poetic Edda and folktales, done all that he could to find researchers and experts on the culture and language and while the letters felt wrong the phonetics themselves were right. He began the slow process of translating every word the voices had said into Old Norse, and from there English. From that he could decipher the sentence structure from the "conversations" he'd caught between the raving voices that came and went as the tide, unbothered by his block on the one he despised.

His parents approved of his interest in other languages, though they wanted him to study more useful ones than Old Gutnish and Old High German. He compromised by agreeing to study modern German and Dutch instead, with the understanding that he could pick the former two back up upon becoming fluent in the latter two. And while his parents still would not take him with them on their travels, they would send him some trinket or another with writing on it if they found one, and they would encourage him to converse with German business owners at any event they took him to. They tried to show that they approved but, while he kept the small trinkets that maintained his interest, Tim didn’t much care.

Something about the way they tried to control him through emotional manipulation...displeased him, made him think of the cold voice with a poisoned dagger for a tongue. He allowed his grades to drop to a 91 average and began studying Old English as well, a break away from the modern languages that were beginning to look the same to his somewhat overworked mind. He once looked down at his notes for science and realized he was writing in English with German interspersed where, he realized with embarrassment, he'd decided it would summarize the concept faster. He tried stopping himself from doing so for a week and a half before deciding it was more trouble than it was worth.

He also wasn't bullied as much because apparently people were unnerved when you started talking about anything in German and with a stern frown.

When Tim was thirteen Robin disappeared and Batman seemed to go mad, his attacks becoming more and more violent to the Gotham underground. Tim did some digging and learned that Jason Todd was killed in Ethiopia but couldn't be bothered to believe the reason when word reached him of Joker being found near dead in Arkham. Ethiopia or not, Tim could add two and two together with the Joker cackling about killing "Batsy's little birdie".

Tim mourned Jason's death, he cried for one of the first times since his birth; it felt like a yawning chasm had opened in his heart, like he couldn't eat and could only just breathe. Jason had been _his_ Robin, in a way Dick wasn't despite being his first. Jason had been the one Tim had saved once or twice when he was stalking the dynamic duo, dropping rocks on gangsters' heads or distracting them just long enough whenever they had him cornered. Jason had been the one Tim had left pieces of literature out for when he heard him arguing with Bruce about how only having Shakespeare in the library was the _opposite_ of saying you had class as far as he was concerned. Losing him made the night seem darker, quieter, emptier than Tim had ever felt before.

Jason's death was also enough to send the voices into a frenzy, their voices thundering over one another as if afraid that he would be the next to die, telling him that he wasn't to blame for "that damned traitor" (the sharp-cold voice, that is the only person that comes to mind when that name is used) and more in the Old Norse variant he was almost conversational in.

 _'Peace, Unnamed One,'_ one soothed, older and jaded but not sharp and serrated like the sharp-cold voice.

 _'No grief, no hurt, no more,'_ another begged, clearly younger and much more insane.

Tim reached out, trying to touch the voices, but it was like grasping at smoke as they escaped through his mental fingers.

When he dreamed that night, it was of a burning in his chest, of a swirling, singing energy that rested behind his sternum, of a beautiful blue sky that was unlike anything seen in Gotham. He woke up and the sky disappeared but the burning and the singing remained, if much less than in the dream.

* * *

"Batman needs a Robin," he told Batman this like it was obvious, like saying the seasons change throughout the year, because to Tim it _was_. Batman needed a Robin, as the tide needed the moon to exist, like plants needed the sun to live and thrive. The voices rose up, briefly, all saying in one thunderous voice –

"And that should be you?" Batman interrupted the voices, clearly trying to bait a reaction, and Tim felt his lips pull back at the thought, acting out of instinct more than logic.

"I will not be some stand-in for a partner pair. Not again." And he pulled back because _he_ didn’t even know what he meant by that. He felt the voices go dead silent, felt the way Batman stared at him before dismissing it and him. "You will lose yourself if you do not find a way to combat this darkness," he tells him, but his words meet nothing but air as Batman disappears.

He felt the fire in his chest burn hotter, burn brighter as he growled to himself. "Stupid, stubborn man, I'm not asking him to adopt a new child, I'm asking him to check himself, and if he won't, have another do it for him." Still, he respected the man's way of mourning for a while longer.

Until he and Nightwing became extraordinarily stupid and got themselves captured.

He felt his skin crawl as he donned the Robin outfit, Alfred a supportive presence beside him. "Thank you, Mr. Pennyworth, for agreeing that... _something_ should be done," Tim said, pale blue eyes taking in the interior of the cave.

“It is I who should be thanking you, Master Timothy, for agreeing to do this so that Masters Bruce and Dick may survive. But might I say, you seem quite…uncomfortable.” Alfred helped him don the cape and applied the adhesive and domino over Tim’s face.

Tim smiled at him briefly before examining the gloves he was slipping on over his hands. “I never wanted to be Robin. I wanted Batman to remain a good man, to step out of that dark place he’s becoming so entrenched in, but I never wanted to be a part of a partner pair as a second, or a third, stand in ever again,” he told the man, the words coming from some other place deep down and he didn’t know how he knew but he believed everything he was telling the older man. The voices remained silent.

He saved Batman and Nightwing.

Batman took him as Robin, and Tim accepted as he read the implied, "you or no one" in that offer.

Tim could admitted he hated both vigilantes a little after that.

* * *

The years that followed were mixed, both pleasant and not. He watched as his parents died, leaving him with a hollow feeling in his chest but little more, their absence from his life marked in his apathy. He felt the euphoria of train surfing, felt the camaraderie of being with fellow outcasts with Young Justice, felt the bond of being partners with Bruce strengthen with each new trial they overcame.

(Though he would never forget the test where Bruce made him question everything he knew, trusted, and believed in, when he began to think he was mad. And he would never fully forgive him for that. Madness was something he did not respond kindly to.)


End file.
